Despite Bitcoin’s Plunge, These Crypto IPOs Are Seen on Deck for 2026

Even with the past year’s crop of cryptocurrency IPOs having suffered massive losses amid bitcoin’s plunge and talk of a “crypto winter,” a new batch of digital asset companies are expected to go public in 2026.

Potential IPO contenders are already lining up. Kraken, a crypto exchange, filed confidentially for an IPO in the fourth quarter. Consenys, parent company of the popular wallet MetaMask, and Ledger, a hardware wallet manufacturer, are reportedly beginning to prep listings.

Many current investors in these still-private companies took their stakes when the firms were nascent upstarts and had much lower valuations. They’ve been waiting a long time to cash out—in some cases, over a decade. With the Trump administration’s firmly pro-crypto stance and Wall Street’s growing appetite for stablecoins and digital asset infrastructure, the industry is seizing the moment.

But public market investors are finding out the hard way that the shorter-term prospects for these stocks are closely tied to the ups and downs of crypto prices. “It really just comes down to most cryptocurrency companies are very heavily exposed to both the price of cryptocurrency and then the amount of interest there is in cryptocurrency, which tends to be influenced by price performance,” says Michael Miller, a Morningstar analyst who covers Coinbase COIN, the largest US crypto exchange.

One potential haven could be companies with strong stablecoin businesses, such as Kraken. Stablecoins don’t have the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies because their value is linked to the value of underlying investments, generally US Treasuries.

Crypto IPOs’ Big Losses

Many crypto investors went into 2025 with high hopes that with allies in the White House, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would go mainstream and deliver big profits. For a time, this seemed to be the case, with the price of bitcoin rising to a record high of roughly $126,000 in October from less than $94,000 at the end of 2024.

Against this backdrop, a number of crypto companies went public, with most seeing big first-day pops. Bullish BLSH, which debuted last August, had an 89% first-day pop. eToro ETOR which went public in May, saw its stock jump 29%. Shares of Gemini Space Station GEMI, founded by the Winklevoss twins, rose 14% on their first day of trading in September.

But beginning in October, bitcoin suffered a collapse that it took it below $63,000 this month, and all these stocks have posted huge losses.

Circle CRCL, eToro, Bullish, and Gemini are all trading below their listing prices, with Bullish down more than 52%, eToro down 58%, and Gemini having cratered nearly 80%. Since its opening trade last June, stablecoin issuer Circle has seen its share price tumble 11%, a relatively modest loss compared with the rest of the group.

“The structure of these companies is very risky, and then when you have a new company that’s presumably small, you’re just doubling down on that theme,” Miller says. “One of the big challenges for cryptocurrency companies in general is finding more stable recurring revenue sources,” Miller says.

The Crypto IPO Window Is Still Open

Despite the thrashing public stocks have taken, industry insiders still view the backdrop for private company exits positively. “A more mature set of companies [has] meaningfully reopened both IPO and M&A paths,” explains Aklil Ibssa, Coinbase’s head of corporate development. “In 2026, exits will favor institutional-grade companies with real scale and fundamentals that stand on their own, not those reliant on market cycles alone.”

Part of the optimism revolves around stablecoin issuers and infrastructure providers. “Public investors either want a company [that] isn’t directly indexed to cryptocurrency prices or has substantial financial resources that they can withstand a bad market,” Miller says.

US banks—including Morgan Stanley MS, Citi C, and Bank of America BAC—began eyeing stablecoins last summer ahead of the US Senate’s Genius Act, which established federal frameworks for stablecoins. Federal agencies have also provided greater regulatory clarity. The FDIC announced in March 2025 that banks can engage in crypto activity without prior approval. The agency also removed SEC oversight requirements for covered stablecoins.

“One of the big trends from late 2024 to 2025 was this idea that a more favorable regulatory regime was going to allow for much better business conditions for these companies, and that’s probably why you’re seeing more interest in IPOs now,” Miller says. “Getting SEC approval under the old regulatory regime just seems extremely challenging.”

Among the companies seen most likely to go public in 2026, Kraken has the most substantial stablecoin business, thanks to a bank charter and an active stablecoin yield product.

Meanwhile, top venture-backed companies like Ripple have closed substantial late-stage rounds at higher valuations. Ripple was valued at $40 billion in a $500 million late-stage round in November 2025. The firm, which has raised about $926 million in total, was previously valued at $15 billion in a January 2022 secondaries transaction. The company used those proceeds to acquire crypto prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. The company’s leadership has said the company has no imminent IPO plans. But it may just be a matter of time; PitchBook’s VC Exit Predictor pegs Ripple’s eventual IPO probability at 96%.

Last year was also big for crypto mergers and aquisitions, including the biggest transaction in the sector yet: Coinbase’s $2.9 billion acquisition of exchange Deribit. Globally, M&A in the crypto industry notched $7.7 billion across 288 deals. In 2024, there were 234 M&A transactions totaling $2.4 billion.

“It’s not just about getting bigger, but also diversifying the different types of revenue you have, and from that, you create a much better chance of being successful with the IPO,” says Quynh Ho, GSR’s head of venture investment.

The SEC and CFTC announced last week that they are forming a joint venture to implement the administration’s crypto priorities. The agencies had previously squabbled over crypto oversight. “Significant work remains,” said SEC Chair Paul Atkins, who added that the goal is to “reduce uncertainty” and “lower the cost of compliance” for crypto investors.